They Ain’t making Any More of It

First, there’s that word: “resources.” It implies that everything on the Earth is to be used for human benefit. Animals and plants don’t use resources, so they’ll be left out. Seems questionable taste.

While Mankind may potentially be the reasoning animal, setting Homo sapiens inevitably apart from other creatures, to date Homo has failed to live up to the sapiens part of the name.

It is entirely possible for the human race to take its rightful place alongside all other life forms on this planet, not for spiritual reasons, not for ethical or moral reasons, but for the enlightened realization that humans cannot live on this planet in the absence of all other species that make this the only place in the Universe, as far as we know, where life flourishes.

Mankind is the only animal that can peer into the future and contemplate the consequences of our actions. We can see that we are rapidly drawing down the planetary credit amassed during billions of years of rampant evolution and geomorphology. We can forecast that at some point in the not too distant future we will no longer be able to extract key biological and/or geological products of the Earth that keep our various societies and cultures growing and developing. We can understand what this means in terms of the future of Homo sapiens on this Earth.

And we can do something to postpone or even eliminate that inevitable event…or not. It’s up to us. We know what to do. We know how to do it.

If we don’t change our profligate ways, Mom will step in and clean our room for us, and we won’t be happy with the outcome, if indeed we are still around to contemplate our plight.